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DEREGULATION
"The
nature of the economic system should be a matter for
public choice, and free market capitalism should not
be accepted without any discussion of the rich variety
of alternatives ... Unlike civil laws, economic laws
are imposed on people with all the authority of immutable
laws of nature. But the economy is created by people,
supported by government intervention, regulation, statute
and subsidy, and implemented in such a way that it gives
substantial wealth and power to a privileged few, while
the majority face a life of relentless work, stress
and periodic financial insecurity."
-- Tony Benn |
...
the 20th century has been characterized by three developments
of great political importance:
The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power,
and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting
corporate power against democracy.
-- Alex Carey
The
most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer
decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable
institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes,
military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern
corporations.
-- Noam
Chomsky
What
is called 'capitalism'is basically a system of corporate
mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable
private tyrannies exercising vast control over the
economy, political systems, and social and cultural
life, operating in close cooperation with powerful
states that intervene massively in the domestic
economy and international society.
-- Noam
Chomsky
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"Deregulation
was just the removal of rules
without considering why the rules were there in the first
place."
-John Courage
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"...
leadership has to be focused on some very radical
ideas that only we as 21st Century people can talk
about: making sure people have a livelihood, making
sure people receive a living wage, making sure the
environment, the Mother Earth, is embraced and cherished
and not destroyed. Making sure people are healthy
in what they eat, making sure we hold people and corporations
accountable for the damage they do not only to our
environment but to our institutions."
-- Danny
Glover
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Do
you realize that $150 billion of our tax money is
given to the corporations, unions and wealthy people
for tax breaks, special subsidies and special regulations?
That money would be available for health and education
and building bridges. -- Doris
Haddock (Granny D)
"I'm
not against the corporations. They are our wealth.
But they are getting too greedy. I don't want to do
away with corporations. I want them to make our cars,
however, not our laws."
-- Doris
Haddock (Granny D)
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One thing that corporations do not do is give out
money out of the goodness of their hearts.
-- Molly
Ivins
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Democracy
is about two things. First, it is about purpose.
In the political realm, it's about an overriding
concern for the common good. In the economic realm,
it's about having the common good trump the narrow
self-interest of the financial elite. It's about
broadening corporate purpose from serving shareholders
to serving stakeholders, and releasing executives
from the destructive mandate to maximize shareholder
gain at any cost. Second, democracy is about structures
that bring this purpose to life. It's not about
separating good corporations from bad, but about
shaping the system forces that act on all corporations.
It's about consciously crafting new democratic system
structures, structures of voice, structures of decision
making, structures of conflict resolution, structures
of accountability.
-- Marjorie
Kelly
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The
proper goal of an economic democracy agenda is to
replace the global suicide economy ruled by rapacious
and unaccountable global corporations with a planetary
system of local living economies comprised of human-scale
enterprise rooted in the communities they serve and
locally owned by the people whose wellbeing depends
on them.
-- David
Korten
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"Wake
up America! The insurance companies took over health
care!
Wake up America! The pharmaceutical companies took
over drug pricing!
Wake up America! The speculators took over Wall Street!
Wake up America! They want your Social Security!
Wake up America! Multinational corporations took over
our trade policies!
Wake up America! We went into Iraq for oil! WAKE UP
AMERICA!"
-- Dennis
Kucinich
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Utilities
used deregulation to effect a series of mergers limiting
competition. In order to accelerate profits, cost cutting
ensued, involving the layoff of thousands of utility
company employees, including some who were responsible
for maintenance of generation, transmission, and distribution
systems. A number of investor-owned utilities stopped
investing in the maintenance and repair of their own
equipment, and, instead, cut costs to enhance the value
of their stock rather than spending money to enhance
the value of their service.
-- Dennis
Kucinich |
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Federal
policy over the past century has largely failed to
promote an energy system based on safe, secure, economically
affordable, and environmentally benign energy sources.
The tax code, budget appropriations, and regulatory
processes overwhelmingly have been used to subsidize
dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power. The
result: increased sickness and premature deaths, depleted
family budgets, acid rain destruction of lakes, forests,
and crops, oil spill contamination, polluted rivers
and loss of aquatic species and the long-term peril
of climate change and radioactive waste dumps–not
to mention a dependency on external energy supplies.
~ Ralph
Nader
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It's
incredible to see labor unions and environmentalists
getting together to stop the corporate mentality that
destroys both jobs and the environment.
-- Bonnie
Raitt |
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Is regulation
per se bad? Is better regulation bad?
I think better regulation is good for the business community,
and I think that's something we should get together on.
-- Ed Rendell
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We
are capable of regaining our reverence for life, of
replacing the drive to conquer with the will to cooperate,
of remaking our engineered institutions, including
our corporations, into living systems.
-- Elisabet
Sahtouris
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On
issue after issue, the polls -- and these are not
snapshot polls; these are polls over a consistent
period of time -- show that most Americans share what
one could call core liberal or progressive values:
investment in health care and education over tax cuts;
fair trade over free trade; corporate accountability
over deregulation; environmental protection over laissez-faire
policies; defending Social Security and Medicare over
privatizing them; raising the minimum wage over eliminating
it. The country prefers progressive alternatives to
the failed policies of the conservative right.
-- Katrina
vanden Heuvel
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“The
people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did it
one lousy mortgage at a time.
It happened more than three years ago, and there has been
no real accountability,
and there has been no real effort to fix it.
-- Elizabeth Warren
Contrary
to the received wisdom, global markets are not unregulated.
They are regulated to produce inequality.
-- Kevin Watkins
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We
have to speak out now on behalf of our community and
on behalf of the land and say they're the same thing
and say "No, we are not rolling over" and "No, this
is not a corporate enterprise." This is democracy
in the fullest sense and we must have regard and reverence
and those are the cornerstones of a just society.
~ Terry
Tempest Williams
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Read
The BETTER
WORLD BOOK
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